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MEYMA ii. The Dialect

MEYMA, district in central Persia, on the road leading north from Isfahan to Qom.

ii. The Dialect

Meyma district is at the heart of the area where the Central dialects are spoken. Almost the entire district has been resistant to Persian in favor of the local vernacular (see ISFAHAN xx). Meymaʾi is a variety of the local dialects of Kashan district (see KASHAN vi) and shows many similarities with other Central dialects (henceforth CDs), but also some differences that will be emphasized in this entry. The dialect is known through the documentation of Ann K. S. Lambton (texts, 3,100 words, supplemented by a glossary and verb paradigms; Lambton, pp. 5-43), a list of words by M.-R. Majidi (pp. 61-64), and, on the question of grammatical gender, several sentences by Ehsan Yarshater (p. 741).

PHONOLOGY

The vowel phonemes of Meymaʾi are similar to those of modern Persian, consisting of the tense set /â î û/ and the lax /a e o/, with ε, ɔ, ü as allophones in Lambton’s phonetic transcription, plus the diphthongs /ō/ (with the allophone ȫ; ow in Majidi) and /ey/. Lack of stress marks in the available data hinders our knowledge of certain morphological traits. Notable among consonants are the pharyngeal [ħ] and [ʕ], while not properly phonemes, are pronounced in several words of Arabic origin: rüḥ “soul,”ḥosüla “patience,” saḥbe “morning,” saḥbā “tomorrow,” ʿamal “performance,” ʿεšḡ “love,” ʿεzat “glory,” ʿɔmr “lifespan.”

Vowels. Three vertical layers can be identified: archaistic, modern, and innovative. This is illustrated by the Mid. WIr. *ē, which is retained as /e/ (mera “husband”; cf. Mid. Pers. mērak “young man, husband”), raised to /i/ under the possible influence of western Persian (pīšīn “midday”), or further developed to [ü] (düm “face”). — Another interesting development is that of OIr. *-aka, via Mid. WIr. -ak, which has yielded both /-a/ and /-e/, with nearly even distribution among the inherited words of the dialect. This would be highly unusual without considering the possibility of an underlying gender distinction (see below), although no correlation can be established, e.g. püre “boy,” dōte “girl,” vačε“child,” dade “brother” (cf. dādā “sister”), mεra/e “husband,” dadamira “husband’s brother,” xāmira “husband’s sister,” axe “man,” māne “mother,” bɔε“husband,” bābāgūrde “grandfather,” bāxsüra “father-in-law,” owīre “pregnant,” hɔle “hole,” ruwa “day,” golūʾe “socks”; viya “widow,” māye “female.”

NOUN MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

Nouns are marked with (1) -ā in the plural, as in karkā “birds,” čamɔ “eyes”; (2) -e/-i in an eżāfa construction, although it is not genuine to the dialect; (3) -ī̆/-e, especially when accompanied by yε “one,” to become indefinite: yε jan-i/e bo “there was a woman”; (4) -e (likely to be stressed, as in colloquial Persian) to become definite, düme “the picture”; (5) -ā̆/ε (< Pers. -rā) to be signified as a definite object: bāft-e hɔsn-e xɔšεš-ε ake “she was boasting of her beauty,” tā mɔn īn mard-ā jande-š vɔkεrɔn “that I may turn this man alive” (otherwise unmarked: mun bebe “take me!” īn māyegā xεb bεmrūt “I sold this cow well”). However, the distinction among the categories 3, 4, and 5 is not always clear, particularly when stress patterns are unknown. The problem becomes more complicated if we assume a faint trace of gender distinction in Meymaʾi, on the grounds that its immediate northern neighbor, Jowšaqān (see JOWŠAQĀN ii. The Dialect), is one of the few known among the Central dialects that have best preserved this grammatical feature. Yarshater finds no trace of gender distinction in Meymaʾi, but he construes the definition markers masc. -a and fem. -e for the animate accusative, from the examples in quč-a/asm-a sar-berbin “slaughter this ram/horse” vs. boz-e sar-berbin “slaughter the goat,” in boz-e beba “carry this goat,” although the assumption is vitiated in in miš-a behrinda “buy you this ewe” (Yarshater, p. 741, fn. 40). Further counter-examples to gender distinction can be drawn from Lambton’s documentation, e.g. karg-a de mɔn de! “give me the hen!” (See also a discussion on gender distinction under Diachronics, above.)

Person endings consist of two sets, as shown in Table 1. Set I endings are used in the present tenses and the intransitive past. Set II endings, employed in the transitive past as agent markers, always precede the stem and are optionally fronted. Imperative endings are the singular -e/zero and the plural -ide: bεše “go!” bebe(re) “carry!” bepīč “cook!” bexüs “hit!” bȫdεr “pass!” kεrīde “do!”

Tenses. Simple tenses are those shown in Table 2. A future tense is signified by the invariable kom(i), inserted before preterit forms: kom boyun “I will be,” kɔmi dā “he will have.” The perfect tenses employ the past participle, which is the past stem suffixed by the formant -á/-é: bemaiyɔn “I have come,” hā-m-gata “I have bought,” māst-edun hādāya “you have given yogurt.” The Pluperfect is formed by the past participle of the main verb and the preterit forms of the copula: beme boyon “I had come,” be-m-karda bo “I had done.” The perfect subjunctive employs the past participle and the subjunctive forms of the copula: āhe bεnda (Pers. nešasta bāšand) “they may have sat,” zūne bū (Pers. dānesta bāšad) “he may have known.”

The transitive past. Meymaʾi has retained an ergative construction in conjugation of transitive verbs in past tenses, where the enclitic pronouns, or Set II “endings,” appear before the stem to act as agent markers. There is a strong tendency in the past for the agent to be stranded from the verb and recede in the sentence to a preceding word, more often to (1) the direct object but also to an (2) indirect object or (3) adverb. Examples: (1) bar-εš bast “he shut the door,” tɔ-š ji bālā mɔn xεlḡat bekarda “he has then created you for me,” tɔ-m... behrī “I bought you”; (2) de jan-εš-εš dā “he gave to his wife,” var xɔš-εš nā “he placed [it] in front of himself”; (3) yak kam-εš bexā “he ate a little,” šāh bī-š bevā “the king then said.” The agent optionally remains on the verb (īn māyegā xεb bε-m-rūt “I sold this cow well”) and is repeated occasionally: īn harf-εm bālā māyεgā na-m-vɔ “I would not say these words about the cow.”

Be and become. The substantive verb consists of the present stem zero, the past stem bo-, and the subjunctive stem b-, conjugated regularly (save the 3rd sg.) with the person-ending Set I (Table 3). The copula is aspect insensitive, i.e. it takes no modal prefix in the affirmative. The past participle is boya and the imperative is be (sg.). Negative: nebe “be not!; it may not be” naha “is not,” nehinda “they are not.”

The locative (or existential) verb can be expressed by the copula (with the stem h- for the 3rd person), as in yε pālun-e xar ha, ammā hɔi-yε xar naha “a donkey’s pack-saddle is there, but the donkey itself is not.” In most cases, however, the locative verb is expressed by the copula preceded by the locative de (see above), which at the same time functions as a postposition, often within a circumpostional phrase: xo-de hεnda “they are asleep,” dɔkkūn-e xɔš de bo “he was in his shop,” har yā-de bu “wherever he might be.”

“Become” is based on the present stem b- and past stem bo-, which optionally takes the modal prefix be- or the preverb vā-. “Be” and “become” overlap in the subjunctive. Exx.: pā boyun “that I get up,” neboyun “I was/became not,” maxvo voboyun “I was lost.”

Modals.(1) gī ː gā “want; must” is conjugated with Set II pronouns/endings as the agent in all tenses: pres. a-m-gi, atgi, ašgi, amungi, adungi, ašungi, past: a-m-gā, etc. Examples: atgi hā-t-dun “you want that I give [it to] you,” ašgā ke taʾrīf-ε dōt-εš bekεre “he wanted to praise his daughter,” natgī “desire not!” The agent may follow the stem (harči dεl-εt gīš “whatever your heart desires”) or be fronted even in the present tense (nun-e pīšīn-εmagi “I want a midday meal”). The subjunctive is attained by dropping the durative marker: ḡand-εšgī “that he want sugar.” “Must” is expressed with the modal prefix be-: bamgī šo “I must go” (cf. dialect of Kuhpāya (q.v.), in which the senses “want” and “must” are constructed on the durative and perfective forms, respectively, and the neighboring dialect of Jowšaqān, where both “want” and “must” are expressed irrespective of the form and always with the durative marker.) (2) naš(i) “cannot; should not” is followed by the subjunctive, the apocopated infinitive (i.e. the past stem), or the infinitive of the main verb: to naš kε... bāft bekεri “you should not boast,” hεški naši xond “nobody can read,” naši šoyan (corrected for šoyun) “I cannot go.” (3) The verb “can” is normally expressed idiomatically: tiḡ-εm arbīnī (lit. “my blade cuts”) “I can,” tiḡ-εmbεšbεrind “I could.”